Oh, and just to prove my point about the box art... what kind of game is this?!

Assuming you don't have prior knowledge or are a tremendous guesser... yeah. You have no way of knowing. Besides, the point of the box art is to get your attention and make you want to know more about it. If you can't figure out the genre after digging further (like watching the trailer), then that's a problem.

(That game is murdering us, by the way. As is that bus simulator, apparently.)

@Creaphis: Yes, perhaps it's trying too hard and perhaps it's not perfect. Again, I'll take it to a writing workshop and see if I can get some pointers from some dedicated, experienced writers. But if it doesn't appeal to you personally, just skip it. That option is there for a reason.

In regards to the business side of things, I don't think what you guys are saying is accurate. You seem to be under the assumption that all there is to success is a). Having a good game, and b). Being on Steam, with the assumption being that if you're on Steam and not having success, clearly the game sucks. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

If I'm launching a product (let's say a vacuum cleaner) and successfully get it onto Walmart/Amazon, you don't just go "Well, it's easily accessible to millions of people now! My job here is finished!" and go sit on the beach sipping cocktails. You have to make people want it. You have to let people know what sets yours apart, figure out which people to target, figure out who's buying it, listen to feedback, update it, promote it, work with the retailers to make your product visible, potentially convince them to make it more visible... all sorts of things. Success goes way beyond "have it in a big store".

All of those are things we haven't been doing enough of, but will do much more of as we build up to the final release. Might I remind you that Skulltag experienced similar slow growth (which, by the way, was available to those on a much larger system than Steam itself called The Internet). I knew I had a pretty fantastic, yet misunderstood source port that wasn't as popular as it probably should have been. Eventually, it grew and blossomed and did become quite popular, and I credit Rivecoder with a lot of that. I think there are parallels here with Wrack. We don't have the luxury to wait around this time, however, so I'm doing what I can to speed the process along.

Creaphis
I will deliberately take a contrary position just for the sake of writing incredibly long arguments

Posts: 4232
Registered: 10-05

Tons of amazing stuff on Steam slips through the cracks all the time. I'm not questioning that. It's just that there isn't really another target to shoot for once you're already there. Anyways, right now most people haven't heard of Wrack and that may yet work in your favour. Instead of trying to maintain a constant, low-level buzz around your game that informs gamers of your product without interesting them in it, pull back, make a really good game and then try to get simultaneous promotion on some game news sites at relaunch time. That's what I'm trying to suggest here.

Creaphis said:
Instead of trying to maintain a constant, low-level buzz around your game that informs gamers of your product without interesting them in it, pull back, make a really good game and then try to get simultaneous promotion on some game news sites at relaunch time. That's what I'm trying to suggest here.

That's exactly what we tried to do with this recent launch. It didn't work. It's time for a new strategy.

Our next update is out! We've now got a beta of Steam Workshop going, so you can now browse, play, and submit custom content through WrackEd itself! We haven't had a centralized location for maps and mods up until this point, so this will be quite the nice thing!

Anyway, full changelog available by clicking the pic, which has the trailer too.

Why do you consider it "selling short"? I assume the price of the final product will be the same anyway (will it?). Some big, commercial products appear on flash sales as well so the only way I can think about it is as a way to bring game to larger attention.

I was pretty sure Duck Tales was going to win. The fact that Another World won is pretty surprising to me. I don't think it's that well-known, and it winning only discounts it by another 89 cents. Oh well. The community has spoken.

Meh, never played either one. I really didn't like Duck Tales (the cartoon) and never got the game back in the day, seemed to childish I guess. That and fuck disney. Another World didn't grab my attention for some reason.

The original Duck Tales was an awesome game. I just don't care to get the remake. The game doesn't take long to beat and from reviews it sounds like they put a lot into cut scenes, and I just don't care that much to see all the cut scenes.

The problem with nostalgia is its all easily accessible. Feeling nostalgic for Duck Tales? Watch it or play it anywhere.

Another World didn't appeal to me then and doesn't appeal to me now. Maybe Wrack will get a bump in sales after being on the home page for everyone to vote on.

True that. I'm tempted to buy it again just so I can have it in a better format than before. (Bought 20y anniversiary edition a few years ago before it came to steam, but it had DRM coming out of it's butt with SecuROM)

For anyone curious on what sort of impact launching a game on Steam has, I've conveniently got a blog up on that very topic! Only check it out though if you're things that are interesting and/or humorous.

By the way, I came across this video which I found to be pretty interesting. It's something we discussed in the previous Wrack thread in regards to silent protagonists.

As it turns out, you guys were right. It's a lot easier to immerse yourself into a tabla rasa type of character than a more lively/emotive one. Certainly you don't have to have a silent protagonist to pull that off, but having one works and is unique to video games (to my knowledge anyway). I still think Kain works as a neutral mask, and now I'm (even more) happy he doesn't utter any one-liners or anything like that. This does have me concerned about what Wrack 2 (should we get that far) would be like playing as the other more lively characters. But hey, that's something to worry about later.

Nothing is set in stone, but I think once it's done we'll offer it on gog.com as well. I don't see why not. The only reason it isn't already is because before they didn't have good support for updates to in-development games, but I think that's changed since then.

And actually, that particular achievement isn't set yet. I'm not sure what I want to do with it, especially since "Featured Maps" may be replaced by some sort of Workshop showcasing thing.